Directed by Lance Lindsay
Starring C. Juston Campbell, Faye Bolt, John W. Smith, Taylor Kingsley and Marcia Linn
Here's a review that I've been saving up for a long time. I've mentioned Star Crystal a few times in passing as one of my favorite bad movies of all time, and if you're looking for a flick that is bad in pretty much every way that a movie can be yet still be watchable just for the pure train wreck eye-bleeding quality of it all...look no further. The sheer level of stupidity on display in this flick is really something to behold, not the least of which is the fact that it pulls one of the most truly bizarre, unnecessary 180s in any horror movie that I've ever seen. If you can't tell, this is some movie.
Released in 1986, I'm not entirely sure whether or not it had a theatrical release. There ain't a whole lot of information to be had about this movie on the interwebz, and since I really don't feel like spending thirty minutes scouring the globe for this precious information that my scores of loyal followers are clamoring for, I'm just going to stick with the mysterious approach. I like to think that this movie just appeared one day at some producers' doorstep, deposited like an unwanted child as the sound of the director's sad weeping was heard as he ran away, to be unleashed on video store shelves across the great fruited plain. The real story was probably 76% less dramatic.
Anyway, the movie. Essentially, we've got an Alien ripoff that ends like a kind of spacified version of "Why Can't We Be Friends?" between the villain and his human would-be victims. Given that information, it's still waaaay weirder than you would ever expect. We spend the first 15 minutes with a group of astronauts (in the year 2032, no less) on an expedition to Mars who find a strange egg and bring it aboard their ship. Note to astronauts in science fiction films: this is never a good idea. The egg soon hatches, the baby alien scampering away and hiding somewhere on the ship, only for the astronauts to run out of oxygen and all die. So ends the introduction. And boy, was it fun.
After this lovely little diversion, we meet the real group of main characters - ANOTHER group of astronauts on a rescue operation for the first group. We've got Roger (C. Juston Campbell, who is nowhere near as cool as C. Thomas Howell) and Adrian (Faye Bolt), the two lunkheads in charge who are the only people in the group who don't immediately stand out as future alien fodder. There's also Cal (John W. Smith), the resident ladies' man, and his two would-be conquests, Sherrie (Taylor Kingsley) and Billy (Marcia Linn). Fortunately, we don't spend much time with any of these characters with the exception of Roger and Adrian, but that's both a blessing and a curse. At least the other three are such ridiculous characters that they're laughable; Roger and Adrian are like even more boring love children of Randy Orton and The Miz.
It isn't long before the alien starts to off the three disposable characters, covering them in a translucent slime (which is shown in all of its slimy glory) and skeletonizing them. We don't see much of the alien in these sections of the film, as the take the "less is more" Jaws style approach to building the suspense. Either that or the $10 creature budget couldn't bear showing the creature in these stages. Considering that we're about to see a LOT more of him, who knows. At any rate, sooner or later, it's down to Roger, Adrian, and the alien...
Whose name is Gar, and dig this, he's not really the villain. It turns out that Gar (who has taught himself to speak English after reading about human evolution and the Bible - no joke) is a really nice creature, and only killed the other astronauts in a Three's Company-esque misunderstanding. The rest of the film consists of Gar attempting to help Roger and Adrian repair their ship and make it back home safely, leading to a truly Titanic-style tearjerker of an ending.
If you can't tell, this is some bad movie. The switch that this movie pulls off is one of the more hilarious things I've seen in any movie, horror or otherwise. The voice that Gar speaks with is something that is annoying at first, yet somehow becomes a little more endearing once you've heard him talk for what seems like 15 minutes straight. Not to mention his appearance. Gar LOOKS unlike any kind of alien I've seen in any "space horror" film, and his bizarre appearance is the fact that he is always - and I mean ALWAYS - accompanied by about seventeen layers of slime. The characters are absolutely terrible, and the fact that we're left with two of the most boring characters around played by a couple truly terrible actors, is just icing on the cake.
Strangely enough, I actually DO recommend this movie. Star Crystal is worth watching just for the sheer weirdness; I can't fault Lance Lindsay (who also directed the movie) for phoning it in when it came to penning this screenplay, because we've got a lot of head-scratching moments here that have nothing to do with questionable production values. More than anything though, it's just loads of fun to watch in a crowd setting, which I have done on a few occasions to a very good, MST3K-style result. The only bad part about having a viewing party for this flick is that it's pretty hard to find, as the DVD is out of print and thus fairly expensive. However, those of you who aren't stubborn assholes like me and actually subscribe to Netflix (which is probably about 95% of you) could probably have a lot easier time.
* out of ****. A truly bad film, but fuck me if it isn't fun to watch.
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